26 



The condition necessary to insure these annual appropriations 

 was that the Garden authorities should provide by private subscrip- 

 tion the sum of Fifty Thousand Dollars, "the principal of which 

 sum, or the income thereof" to be used for "the purchase of 

 plants, flowers, shrubs and trees." This Agreement was 

 amended on September 9. 1911 so as to provide, among other 

 things, that the private funds might he expended for Botanic 

 Garden purposes other than those specifically named in the original 

 Agreement. The initial private funds were contributed with the 

 understanding on the part of the donors that they were to con- 

 stitute a permanent fund of which only the income was to be 

 expended. 



The immediate response on the part of the local community and 

 of the botanical world to the opportunities afforded by the new 

 Garden left no doubt of the fact that it met a real need, but sub- 

 sequent events showed that, from the financial point of view, 

 there could not have been chosen, since the founding of our Re- 

 public, a more inauspicious time for establishing a new institu- 

 tion dependent wholly or in part on annual appropriations of 

 public money. 



A generous gift of private funds insured the completion of our 

 buildings in 191 7, before the United States entered the world war. 

 At once the demands for service from the public schools and the 

 general community doubled in amount, necessitating a larger 

 educational and clerical staff, and greatly increased overhead. 

 The increased cost of living made imperative a substantial advance 

 in salaries and wages, and by 192 1 our Tax Budget appropriation 

 had reached the sum of $90,050. This had to be supplemented by 

 $29,129 of private funds, much of which was required to meet 

 a deficit in maintenance. 



In addition to meeting from private funds these unanticipated 

 items of development and maintenance, the Botanic Garden au- 

 thorities have never requested a Tax Budget appropriation for 

 the purchase of plants, books, specimens, lantern slides and study 

 material to loan to schools, nor other "collections," nor for "pub- 

 lications relating to botany." Nearly all of our laboratory appa- 

 ratus has also been purchased from private funds. 



Notwithstanding our steadily increasing needs, the Tax Budget 



